In the early days of film, there was a great deal of experimentation with storytelling. The short-lived serial format, for example, introduced the idea of plot that carried over from week to week, and is still with us in the form of TV series. More importantly, there were a lot of experiments with how to tell stories on film.
Two conventions that emerged in this period have proven quite persistent: one is that you should use close-up shots for important things; the other is that when showing two characters having a conversation, you should alternate shots of each character. These conventions seem so obvious now that it’s hard to believe there were times when they were not used. But if you watch films from the early period you’ll see they weren’t always used then either.
These conventions are so obvious to us because they make conversations so easy to follow. The close-up lets us see exactly what’s going on; the alternating shots ensure we don’t miss anything by keeping our attention focused on just one character at a time.
The trouble is, this makes it all too easy to forget that there are other ways to tell a story on film. One way is through blocking–having characters move around or interact within the frame (as opposed to cutting between different
There is an old Yiddish story about a man who, in the middle of a terrible storm at sea, suddenly announces that he is going to have a drink. “How can you do that,” his fellow passengers ask, “when we are all about to drown?” The man answers, “If I am about to drown, what difference does it make? And if I am not, why should I deprive myself?”
Movies can be like that. They can be an escape from the pressures of daily life. But they can also be stories that tell us how to live. When they are done well, they can do both.
I saw some wonderful films this year. But the one that stuck with me was a small personal film called “Sunrise at Campobello.” Do not be misled by the fact that it is about Franklin Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt: it is not about politics or history; it is about human feelings and relations. It tells the story of their love for each other. It tells us how FDR discovered a strength within himself that he did not know he had, and how Eleanor discovered her own unique talents as a woman and as a wife.
If you see this film, I think it will touch you too. It might even teach
Can you imagine how many times I’ve heard the story of my parents’ first meeting? My mother would describe it to me as a little girl, and her version never changed. She told it with such detail and relish, that I could picture the scene as if I was there.
It was a summer evening at the Strand Theatre on Broadway, when my father first saw my mother. He noticed her immediately. There was something about her that made him feel he knew her already. He had the sudden impulse to speak to her, but hesitated. She seemed so innocent, so untouched by the world.
My father decided to go home and think about it before acting on his impulse. He walked back to our apartment on East 7th Street and sat at the piano for a while, hoping his mind might change. But as he played a Chopin Nocturne, he found himself thinking more about the young woman than about the music.
After several hours, he reached for his coat and walked back to the Strand Theatre. It was twelve thirty in the morning when he arrived at the stage door and asked for Frances Farmer. She appeared shortly after, wearing a white silk blouse and a long black skirt that reached down to her ankles. As she came
What is the best way to teach acting? Lee Strasberg thought it was to get actors to act. He believed that people have a kind of reservoir of emotional experience they can draw upon, and that the way to access this reservoir is through sense memory exercises.
If you’ve never heard of sense memory, here’s how it works: You try to relive an experience from your past as vividly as possible. Then you try to bring that feeling into your current performance.
The most famous of these exercises involves asking an actor to recall the smell of a lemon. The idea is that once they are able to smell the lemon, they will be able to use their other senses as well. And once they can smell and taste and touch the lemon, they’ll be able to feel the emotions associated with it.
This method was hugely influential in Strasberg’s time, but today most actors think it’s a crock. If you ask an actor why he thinks so, he might say something like “It just doesn’t feel real.” Or he might say “It works for some people.”
But if you ask me why I think it’s a crock, I’ll tell you something different: “It doesn’t make any sense.”
There is no such thing
If you’re in the popular arts, and someone is paying you money to be creative, they don’t want to hear your excuses. No one wants to hear your excuses. They have no interest in why you couldn’t do it. It’s not their problem, nor should it be yours. You can complain if you like, but they will pay no attention to your complaints.
Now if you’re doing a lab experiment and something goes wrong, then of course it’s worth trying to figure out what went wrong. But that’s not what artists do. Artists make art because they can’t help it; they don’t really care about the audience; the audience may or may not show up at all; the audience may or may not like the work once it’s done; but none of these things really matter much.
You can lead a writer up to the typewriter, but you can’t make him write one word. You can even put a gun to his head, as Raymond Chandler says, but it won’t help: “I am usually asked why I don’t write more often on some given subject. The answer is simple: I have nothing to say about it.”
Strasberg was very good at getting actors to produce tears and snot on demand
In a book entitled The Method, Lee Strasberg gives his ideas on how an actor should rehearse and play a role. He believes that the actor must find the character’s “throughline,” “the central idea of the play.” This involves an analysis of the play in terms of cause and effect, followed by an interpretation of the actions.
In addition to this problem-solving approach, Strasberg says that the actor must find out what is going on inside his character’s head. In order to do this, he must determine what his character wants or desires and what his motivations are.
The actor has to learn about himself. He must be able to sense the impulses in him so that he can reproduce them at will on stage or film. To do this, he uses exercises that help him unblock his feelings and experience them again as if for the first time.
Strasberg says that acting can be broken down into its component parts–such as voice, movement, speech, relaxation–but that practicing these parts separately is not enough. An actor needs whole body control and must be able to express emotion through gesture, stance, posture, and facial expression.
I have been searching for a method of acting that would be as simple and direct as possible, that would free the actor from self-consciousness. And I feel that I have discovered such a method.
When I left Stanislavsky’s studio in Moscow, I came back to America with my mind made up to develop the work he had started. In my opinion, it was not complete. I worked for many years trying out various ideas and methods of teaching acting. And it was not until the entire school began to take part in the daily rehearsals of plays that we realized how important it was that each member of the cast participate in every creative moment of the production—that no one come late or leave early. This was how “group work” originated, which has become an accepted practice all over the world in stages and studios today.
The more we worked on these productions, the more we realized that this group work gave us an opportunity not only to learn but also to teach. It showed us where our students were weak and where they were strong; it helped us discover our own weak points and strong points as teachers, pointing out what we needed to do more of or less of—above all, it pointed out what we needed to know about ourselves as
